


Lord Help the Sister

by o666666



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Episode: s05e01-02 Redux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:02:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o666666/pseuds/o666666
Summary: Thanksgiving if Melissa had lived.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 5
Kudos: 102





	Lord Help the Sister

Scully is wearing a blue cashmere cardigan with the top two buttons undone and nothing underneath. Her collarbones are driving him to distraction, not least because they are flushed from a white-wine afternoon before Maggie served the turkey. When Scully asked him last week if he had any Thanksgiving plans, it seemed wrong to lie to the very woman he was thankful for. So he’d said _Nah, Scully, nothing special_ , and she’d said _My mother would like me to pass along an invitation_ and _Bill is going to be there, but—_ and he’d stopped her right there because the only way Bill Scully might ever respect him, he realized, would be if he participated in such mainstream events as Thanksgiving dinner.

“Don’t worry about Bill, Scully,” he’d told her. “I’d love to come. Tell your mom to expect me.”

She’d smiled around a bite of the BLT he’d bought her for lunch, and his heart sang.

-

Earlier this afternoon, they sat in Maggie’s living room, paging through a photo album that Melissa had discovered on her mother’s bedroom bookshelf.  
  
“Look at Dana’s braces,” Bill said when they reached a school portrait of Scully looking about fourteen.  
  
“And her bangs,” said Melissa.  
  
Scully cringed. “Such a little tomboy, Scully,” Mulder chided, elbowing her gently. “I dig the chop.”  
  
She looked at him like he was crazy. 

(Things Mulder approves of that Scully does not: impromptu camping, baked beans for breakfast, “the chop.”)

“I want a copy of this,” he’d said, when they came to the photo of a four year-old Scully sitting on skinned knees in the mud. She was thrusting a wriggling frog towards the camera with both hands, and a front tooth was missing from her huge, crinkly smile.  
  
“I knocked that tooth out jumping off the swing,” Scully recalled, a little wistful, and Mulder wondered who she ever thought she was fooling when she complained about running around with him in the woods.  
  
-  
  
He was not the only one thankful for Scully this year. Perhaps subconsciously, her family surrounded her constantly from all sides, the way a cell protects its nucleus. Maggie cast her desperate looks and kept patting her bicep, and finally—knowing Scully at least as well as Mulder does—she bribed her into the kitchen by inventing a problem to declare in need of fixing: “Dana honey, can you help me with the green bean casserole?” 

Compelled to demonstrate his ability to behave without Scully’s direct supervision, Mulder remained in the living room, where Melissa was bugging Bill to draw a Tarot card, please, just one. 

“Think of it as a meditation,” Melissa advised, and Bill grumbled, and Mulder grinned.

Bill picked a card. 

“King of Pentacles,” Melissa said. “Reversed.” 

“So what does it mean?” 

Melissa smiled. “Means you’re a tightass. Next!” 

“ _Hey!_ ” 

Mulder picked a card. 

“Knight of Swords.” 

Mulder blinked. 

“You’re zealous,” Melissa said. “But maybe not enough,” she pointed out, “with matters of the heart. Exercise that EQ, Mulder. You have such a deep capacity to focus. Human connection is our truth.” 

“Smoke a little more weed, Melissa,” Bill said then, and the spell was broken. 

-

Later, as they set the table, Scully pulled the Queen of Swords. 

“Lower your defenses,” said Melissa. 

“Human connection is our truth,” Mulder added, and Scully stuck her tongue out at him. 

-

“Do you think your brother hates me less?” Mulder asked her, stacking firewood in her arms in the backyard. 

“No,” she said from behind the little logs. “I think he’s skeptical of you, Mulder.” 

“Is that genetic?” 

She peeked out one side. “I’m not skeptical of you,” she said. “I am skeptical of your _ideas_ , sometimes.” 

“Sometimes,” he repeated, to be sure. “Thank you. Gimme that.” He took all her wood and carried it inside himself. 

-

And now she is sitting beside him, next to her mother, who keeps squeezing her hand. He, too, uses banal excuses to drift closer to Scully—refilling her wine glass, passing her the Brussels sprouts. (“The casserole came out really good,” he compliments her quietly, and takes seconds in case she wants evidence.)

“I’ve been thinking of going to Peru this spring,” Melissa says. 

Scully sighs in a way that clues Mulder in, exactly, to what’s coming. 

“My close friend recommended this amazing shaman, and—” 

“Melissa,” Scully sighs, “you are not about to spend, I don’t know, _months_ , and _thousands_ _of dollars_ on _hallucinogens_ in the _rainforest_ —” 

“Oh, Dana, you are so judgmental.” 

“Is it safe? Have you considered whether or not it’s, maybe, incredibly appropriative of indigenous culture?” 

“It is _appreciative_ ,” Melissa insists, as Maggie and Bill look on in utter confusion. “It is… a _spiritual awakening_ made possible by Mother Earth—” 

“Hallucinogens?” Maggie leans back from her plate. 

“It’s a plant, Mom—” 

“Ayahuasca,” Mulder offers, lamely, and Scully huffs. “Shamans of the Shipibo tradition believe the environment around us absorbs toxic energies from our buried traumas, and the physical world. They believe that the medicinal plants in the Amazon do powerful energetic work when called forth by the ikaros—these songs customary to the healing practice.” 

“Hey Mulder,” Bill calls from the head of table, speared turkey poised on the end of his fork, halfway to his mouth. “Maybe you should just ask Melissa out.” 

Oh, if a falling hush could be loud.

Maggie outright gasps; Melissa snaps, “Bill!”; and Scully closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, for she would like to undo this night entirely, and pixelate into dust. 

Mulder looks down at his mashed potatoes and wonders how he dared mess up her holiday. 

Then he realizes this is not about him—only to Bill Scully, who is trying to fuck with him, is this about him. 

No. This is about Scully. (Scully who wonders in the interim: _He wouldn’t, but shouldn’t he?_ And _Wouldn’t he?_ And _They really are alike_ ; and _Melissa would never, for me, but he doesn’t know that_ ; and _Oh God no they really would be perfect_ ; and _Of course he picks her too, of course he does_.) 

Then Mulder speaks. 

“Sorry Bill,” he says, with the biggest balls he’s ever had in his life. He tosses an arm along the back of Scully’s chair. “Wrong sister.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to @lepus-arcticus for the Tarot insight. I’m very sorry if my Melissa and I butchered it.


End file.
